IKEA is gearing up to roll out a new retail app that will enable consumers to shop online for products they can use in their homes. According to Reuters, the move is a departure for the furniture retailer that had long driven customers into its stores. Making it easier to shop online is a new strategy for IKEA.
“It is a completely new experience,” said Barbara Martin Coppola, chief digital officer at IKEA. “The app is combined with the store experience, with the online experience.”
Reuters reported that the mobile app will roll out in France first, then in the Netherlands. It will eventually roll out in IKEA’s eight leading retail markets, including Germany, the U.S. and China.
With the retail app, users can visualize how different furniture will look in their homes. Users can input room dimensions into the mobile app, and choose from products and styles based on life stages. Customers are also able to order the products through the app, which will enable customers to point to a piece of furniture, see the fabric and color choices, and view how it would look with similar products.
In 2017, IKEA rolled out an augmented reality app that enables customers to visualize 2,000-plus items, and add them to a shopping list for when they come to the store. Customers could only order online via its website, not the mobile app. The report noted that the new app complements its new strategy of smaller retail stores, located in downtown areas with fewer products. It opened one of these smaller stores in Paris earlier in May.
“People who go to the stores might want to access the full range of IKEA, and that is when digital innovations come in handy,” Martin Coppola told Reuters.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has named the former director of its Whistleblower Office, Brian Young, as its director of enforcement.
The appointment was announced Friday (Feb. 14) by CFTC Acting Chairman Caroline D. Pham, according to a CFTC press release. Young had been serving in an acting capacity since Jan. 22.
“He is a fearless leader that will build an even more impressive enforcement program that will stay true to the CFTC’s mission to protect the American public from fraudsters and scammers,” Pham said in the release. “I am confident that under Brian’s leadership, the CFTC will expand and scale our resources to help more victims than ever before and ensure the integrity of our markets in the name of justice.”
Young joined the CFTC as director of its Whistleblower Office in 2024, according to the release. During his first year in that role, Young oversaw a team that achieved an all-time high number of annual dispositions of whistleblower award applications.
Prior to joining the agency, Young was with the Department of Justice for nearly 20 years, most recently as acting director of litigation for the Antitrust Division, the release said.
Before that, Young served in various roles in the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division, including chief of the Fraud Section’s Litigation Unit, per the release.
While at the Department of Justice, he successfully tried criminal fraud and manipulation cases in the CFTC’s markets, according to the release.
“I want to thank Acting Chairman Pham for her confidence in me and for her commitment to continuing the CFTC’s aggressive efforts to protect our global commodity markets from fraud, manipulation and other abusive practices,” Young said in the release.
The White House said in a Wednesday press release that it sent to the Senate nominations for Brian Quintenz to be chairman of the CFTC and a commissioner of the CFTC for a term expiring April 13, 2029.
Quintenz is a former commissioner of the CFTC and now works for the cryptocurrency unit at venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, PYMNTS reported Wednesday (Feb. 12).
The commission is expected to gain new powers over the cryptocurrency sector.